Journal: El Capitan

I had a dream last week that I was riding in a convertible with a small group of people. The driver was a blond woman. We were driving at the very top of a mountain. This mountain was very tall, a yellow ochre red rust color with white streaks. It had rounded formations at the top. She was driving very quietly and confidently but the two people in the back got frightened and cried out when the car appeared to be going over the edge but it was just a steeper part of the road that went up then down. She was angered by the disruption and turned the car around. It swung out over the edge. This part of the dream was extremely realistic and I remember every detail. I swung out along with the car, seeing the ochre colored rock disappear beneath us. Going along with the torque and pull of the turn, I looked up at the very blue sky. It had wisps of white cloud and a bird flying higher than us. It was terrifying, but we were fine.

I woke myself up because it was too much and I remember thinking what did I just experience?

Today, I wanted to watch some hiking videos on Youtube but nothing seemed interesting then I remembered a trailer for a movie that I had wanted to watch but I couldn’t remember the name. I figured it out after a bit…Free Solo and started watching it, but I decided to watch The Dawn Wall since that story happened first. As I was watching it, I saw the top of El Capitan in Yosemite and it looked just like my dream. No road of course, but the terrain and color was the same.

When I went outside today to get the mail, I got stung by a wasp. Usually, when I get stung by a wasp there is something that I am supposed to be paying attention to.

Advertisement

Journal: Traitor to the Bear

I had a dream this morning that I was witnessing or was part of a treaty or agreement. There was a great brown bear and a woman with straight, dark hair. They had agreed to discuss a compromise of some sort but instead of talking she strode up to the bear and shoved a dagger under his chin and into his neck.

He wrapped his great arms around her, pulled her to him and began to devour the side of her head.

I woke up.

Journal: Blossom

Last night I saw a dark shadow moving by the furniture. This morning, I entered my safe space and asked about this energy. I saw the darkness, the shadow and my brain said to banish it, to ward against it but my heart spoke to me, saying to be kind, to show love.

With love, I asked the shadow to show its true self. Slowly, it rose up and began to turn transparent. It turned into a crystalline pale yellow energy, it was lovely.

A man appeared, an elderly Black man, tall and thin and he embraced the yellow form. He said “Blossom” with the sweetest tenderness in his voice and they both disappeared. She felt like his daughter or granddaughter.

I believe this energy vision that I saw and worked with is related to my past ancestry. A wrong that someone in my ancestral line perpetrated against Blossom and her father or grandfather.

Is this a way to make amends? to help heal some of pain and suffering that my ancestral line is responsible for?

Journal: Generational

Facing and deconstructing my colonizer ancestry is a journey. I have learned that whenever I feel uncomfortable or mad, then that is a prod to look deeper and to learn more. I am second generation southern but my family on both sides is from the north. Somewhat recent northern Irish and Danish on my father’s side, mostly English settlers on my mother’s side (majority of my DNA is Scottish). Most of my ancestors were farmers. Simply by being a white person, descended from settlers and immigrants I have benefited from the suppression and cruelty towards black and indigenous peoples. This is the shadow work…to face and dissect my ancestry.

I am a descendant of colonizers

I am a descendant of colonizers. Land thieves, murderers, policy makers and enslavers

I am a descendant of settlers, people who walked hundreds of miles through wilderness to find a new home

I am a descendant of Puritans, master oppressors…of themselves and of others

I am not the granddaughter of the witches you couldn’t burn. My ancestor was hung on a tree at Salem, not because he was a witch but because he did not conform.

I am also a descendant of the wild ones, Celts and people of the north who danced with the Fey and walked with the Gods.

I have a home now and I know who I am. I slough the labels like a snake sheds its skin and with clear eyes I see my ancestors.

Journal: Dream about the horses

I dreamed last night that the area around the barn had grown over with moss and turkey’s foot because no one had been there in so long but when I went inside the horses were there. I knew they had passed on but they were there anyway. Prince was grumpy because he hadn’t had a treat in so long. I patted him on the rump and said, yes, yes of course, I’ll get some grain. 

Ancestry: George Burroughs

George Burroughs is my first cousin, 11 times removed on my mother’s side and he was executed as a witch at the Salem Witch Trials. He was hung until dead in 1692 then buried beneath the gallows. George Burroughs survived a Wabanaki raid in August of 1676. He was a Harvard graduate, a Puritan minister and many considered him to be a very secretive person. There were rumors that he abused and possibly killed his wives, but there were also rumors that he was the “Black Man” and the leader of all the witches at Salem. It was also said that he had the ability to read minds. He was believed to have inhuman strength, this was what they tried him for during the trials. A description of Burroughs in a reading by Frances Hill: “George Burroughs was confident, strong-willed, and decisive, a man of action as well as a preacher, unusually athletic and clever enough to do well in Harvard. Short of stature, muscular, dark-complexioned, he was highly attractive to women, as is shown by his winning the hand of a rich widow as his second wife when he was a mere village minister.”

Cotton Mather was particularly vehement that Burroughs was executed and was at the hanging personally. It is possible that Cotton Mather took a special interest in his case because he had “peculiar” religious beliefs, which may have been that he was an Anabaptist.

Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.

Inside the Salem Witch Trials

George Burroughs, Salem’s Perfect Witch

I have always known intuitively that I had an ancestor involved in the Salem Witch Trials but I never expected for it to be confirmed. My own personal connection spiritually was through an ancestor named Nathaniel. George’s father was named Nathaniel but also there are many Nathaniels a generation later as well. Every time I try to research George to compile his information in a more orderly and thorough way, my eyes go funny and strained as though I stared into the sun for too long. In fact when I first discovered my connection to him, I had trouble with my sight all day. So, this will have to do for now.

A painting in which George Burroughs is believed to be the man in the middle who is praying. George was able to recite the entirety of the Lord’s Prayer before he was hanged. It was believed that no witch could do this, but Cotton Mather insisted that he be executed anyway.

Ancestry Part 1

I got interested in my geneology when I was in my thirties because of my mother. She was a diligent researcher and found so much great information. I came back to it recently once I discovered that I have 41% Scottish DNA. So far, I haven’t been able to find this Scottish ancestry in my family tree. My father’s tree only goes back so far, but there are many lines from Northern Ireland.

My mother’s line goes back extensively and almost every line that I have been able to follow, which have been many, goes straight back to first colonists and the puritans of New England. Some notable names in this lineage include Richard Lyman, founder of Hartford, Samuel Gardener, Miles, Morgan from Wales, John Annis and the Burroughs family, but there are more.

Mourning

This week has gone by in a fog, punctuated by grief and lingering heartbreak. Last Friday night, Prince, my dear bay gelding succumbed to Cushings disease. He did not go easy. He fought and I was there with him, following him through the mud, singing to him in the dark. He was euthanized in front of his companion, Rosie an elderly mare. We tried to get him farther up the barn, but he couldn’t move. She neighed for him as he died and I think all of our hearts broke in unison at this sound. She had already lived through the deaths of her herd mates, she was the last one alive. Prince came to live with her, as her companion in her dotage but she outlived him too. We made the hard decision to have her put down as well. When she lost her companion before him, she escaped the fence and ran wild for days in the countryside before we were able to track her down.

I will never forget her neighing for him, I will never forget trying to pull him through the mud to get him into the barn, I will never forget singing to him in the dark of night and I will never forget breathing into his nose, one last time, a last goodbye, a last I love you. For one last time, we made our connection.

Something that I used to do with Prince and another horse who I was close to, Henry was to share a breath. I would put my face up to his muzzle and puff gently into his nostril. He would tilt his head towards mine and huff back out at me. We would take turns breathing and blowing back and forth, a gentle steady rhythm for just a few moments. It was meditative, kind and we would make a connection this way.

The barn is empty now, quiet and for the first since I was seven years old, I don’t have horses in my life. My dear Prince was one of the most gorgeous horses I’ve ever known. In the summer his coat was mahogany with light dapples on his rump. His mane and tail were black as night. He was grumpy, stubborn and pushy. He was loving with the sweetest, deepest eyes and he would lick me when he wanted treats.

There is nothing like the sweet dusty warmth of a horse against your shoulder, his breath close in your ear, the smell of him like dirt tinged spice. There is nothing else in the world close to the softness of his muzzle, the look in his eye when he notices that you have a treat. He can be demanding, he can be stubborn, he can be completely oblivious to the fact that you exist. But at other times, his gaze is a light in the darkness, shining right into your heart. 

My Friend’s Mother

I am blessed to have a friend who has been a shining light in my life since I was young. Her mother passed away, leaving earth too early. I offered to spirit walk with her and ask for any messages she might have for her daughter, my beloved friend.

I connected with her Mother today in the spirit world. She is a ribbon of colorful energy. She helped me to remember her messages from before and she showed me how beautiful she is now, how happy.

In my first visit with her mother, we flowed together in a stream of energy, it was compassionate, all loving, embracing and she told me that her main reason for being was to bring her daughter into the world. She was so incredibly grateful to have been able to do this and to have been able to be a part of her life. She was grateful to experience this kind of love. When we parted ways, I saw her clearly as a young rebellious, happy teenager walking down a quiet road lined with pine trees. I think she was wearing cutoff jean shorts. She turned around, smiling and shot us a bird then continued jauntily down her path.

Now she is waves and waves of pure color energy, ecstatic in the energy of the Universe.

She is a ribbon of colorful energy, she is like the wind, she is changing colors, the feeling you get when you lean out of the car window and the wind rushes against your face, watching the world go by, content and ecstatic at the same time. She can be tiny, I saw her from far away, spirally upwards in a tall peak and she can be larger than the universe, energy flowing and she is always the colors. She is happy in this form, this is her natural form, this is her. She let me know that she may not be human again for a long time. It was hard to be a human and she is so beautiful, so creative now that she is back in her true form.

Her daughter’s prayers and words to her are like the colorwaves and the wind that she rides, that she is. She hears them, feels them, understands that they are words, but to her they are like colors on the wind, they join in with her energy and fly around with her in ecstasy.

She came into her human form to accomplish one thing and that was to bring her daughter into the world. She sees her daughter now and she feels proud. She sees that her daughter has stepped into her true self and is living a life that is meaningful and authentic. She sees how much her daughter has grown and how much she has brightened the world and she feels that it was all worth it.

• She has strong Angel energy. I think she was drawn to Angels while she lived and I remember an Angel showing up for her in the first vision I had. I played Angel music while visiting with her then remembered this about her later.
• This art by MystikAngel on Deviant Art is similar to the colors I saw but her energy was arranged in more of a solid wave pattern.